i'll leave a map for you to follow
by ten.years.only.with.you
Summary: It comes out as barely a hint of a whisper and lands on his ear drum, miles between them, inky sky darkening by the minute. "Find me." klaroline


_You've got one hand in the devil's, dear, and one in mine._

x

It's stained like summer on her hands. The perfectly slender fingers wrapped in tight laces as they clasp the others and all the hope in the world for survival exists in those tips. When he, with lightning speed, flails them around her tulip pink mouth, hushing all the breath (if she had any to begin with), the heartbeats (if she had any to contend with at all) flap out in a crazy rhythm because she is _safe_, safe, safe.

A strong hand clapped across her lips, smearing dry blood and stickly sweet sweat and berry lipstick in a sham over her skin. Her mouth forms a tiny perfect circle as a slip of a gasp falls between the part in her open mouth, she spins and comes face to face with the monster with the bottle green eyes and knowing ghost of a smoky smirk.

His hand sits on the swoop of her neck, the other tangled in her golden whorls of curves and she knows that she can't feel the heat of anything or the dampness of her tear stained cheeks or the coolness biting the skin on her forearms, but good God almighty, she hates how his palms feel like flames struck from a freshly lit match. He feels like a man. Not some devil from the seventh layer here to haunt her day dreams and night terrors.

Those orbs lock on hers, admiring her face, softening the instant his gaze shifts to her. And she can feel the shock grace her ocean eyes, stream through the thin sheets of air escaping her lips "It's just me," he whispers as if she would know whose hand grips her waist like breeze wrapping through fresh lined laundry. "You're safe."

He shifts her hips, one hand tracing their initials in the small of her back, the other feeling the blood pumping in her neck, fragile skin ripe as a sultry peach. His eyes pore over her, absorbing every last bit of her figure to the way her topaz whorls swipe onto her collarbone, to the wild flash in her muddled Mediterranean eyes, to the supple swish and swivel of the curves that wind from head to toe, her tulip mouth messy and raw.

He memorizes it, and in an instant, she understands how Damon and Stefan feel about Elena, how Jeremy feels about Bonnie, how Alaric feels about Jenna. Pure unadulterated compassion, virtuous love, and complete terror that it could be ripped from your shaking hands in a hurricane of time. The devil on her shoulder, waits and stares, until she spits out just two paltry words that hover on her tongue.

"Thank you," she sighs, and as soon as the thought leaves her mouth and he sprints away she imagines one and only one thing that she wishes Klaus could have heard. So with moving feet and wind cutting in her curls, the night ink kissing the bare skin of her collarbone, she says it to no one and nothing and prays that it carries miles and lands a soft hum on his ear.

"Find me."

x

She doesn't cry when she learns that Alaric staked Klaus. She doesn't even react, just sits, stews, and tries to recall what it was like to be a human and breathe in and out, in and out. Her bedroom is dark and still, no air rifling through the curtains as she ransacks the false bottom on her top drawer and pulls out the bracelet, catching the passing light of the moon and a slightly crumpled but painstakingly accurate sketch of the way she never imagined she appeared, but actually is. And with that she allows herself to think of his perpetual five o'clock shadow, the cat ate the canary grin, the untamed beast living in his inky bottle green eyes, and the way he was not once selfish with her.

Caroline can't remember the last time that the devil learned to love. Maybe that was always a fairytale to begin with.

x

Pulling herself from the ground, she flies (what feels like against the current) to the man she says she loves, the man she says she'll run with until time stops and the world falls down. And he stands tall, shoulders back, fingers yanking her hair gently like a child that can't understand what is going on, and she feels just awful because she can't fix this, and _oh god, Tyler we're going to be alright_. She can't help but think of Klaus in that moment because it's all his fault and still, she just wishes he could have heard her, so she tells Tyler what she wants, needs him to hear and with that confession, carries like hell out the cellar door and to some semblance of what a breathtaking seventeen year old girl is meant to be.

x

Tyler survives, and Caroline thanks Bonnie religiously, counting the forgiveness of her friend on her hands as she wraps her arms around his chest and sings along with the course of the golden liquid pumping through his veins, realizing that they both have something in them that they can never get out. The demon suckles on her skin and sips on his salvation, sliding in between them before either ever knew what was going about.

And she cannot shake him.

x

Murmuring sleepy logarithms into Tyler's chest as he counts the freckles on her shoulder blades, weaves his eyes up and down her naked skin in an appreciation never seen before, she wonders how she could have ignored that catching hitch of the way his orbs linger dangerously whence they haven't before, stopping and settling on the parts he knows that she loathes, and instead he dances his hands along the curves, gently sucking on them, flicking a tongue over the flesh until she is moaning his name. How he cradles her head with the care of a newborn child as she recounts the stories of days past, come and gone, he listens with rapt attention not once seeking solace elsewhere, and so she tells him of the school and the deep, dank evening and of the man that she remembers as a savior. For once Tyler doesn't scoff or roll his eyes, brush her off and accuse her of feelings for Klaus.

Her muddled Mediterranean eyes silently simper closed, loose lips burning chasms on his borrowed prison as Klaus ever so softly smiles without sin and places his cherry bitten mouth atop the crown of topaz wheat. (He muses that if he is going to be trapped in _this_, screaming for death and release, he's going to think twice.)Barely moving his lips, he imagines her standing in the street twenty four hours prior, a wasted mess but still heartbreakingly beautiful, almost accidentally sending a message that landed with a baby pitch on his ear drum, lighting a stoked flame. Glancing down at the sleeping girl of simple seventeen, his breath (if he had any at all) catches in his throat, heart (catatonic if he had one) spells out an ode to Caroline.

"Remember me."


End file.
